Victims of van crash that killed 7, injured 9 awarded millions

Victims of a van crash near the Hall-Gwinnett County line three years ago are being awarded a massive settlement connected to multiple lawsuits filed in the case.

Seven women, including one from Habersham County, Kristie Whitfield, 44, Mt. Airy, were killed and nine were injured when their van flipped and burst into flames on I-85 near the I-985 split. They were all part of a Lawrenceville-based addiction recovery group home called We Are Living Proof.

The total of the settlement announced Wednesday is over $160 million.

(Georgia News Network contributed to this story.)

About the Author

Ken Stanford is Online News Editor for GLORY 97.5, a position he has held since August 2022.

Ken was born in Moultrie, Georgia, and says he knew from the time he was 5 or 6 he wanted to be a “radio announcer.” That dream was realized when he was hired by Moultrie radio station WMTM in 1960 at the age of 15 as a weekend disc jockey. A 1963 graduate of Moultrie (now Colquitt County) High School, he has spent his whole career in Georgia working for stations in Atlanta, Marietta, and Gainesville – most recently as News Director for 40 years at WDUN in Gainesville. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force Reserves.

Ken retired in 2011 but came out of retirement last year to help GLORY, on a part-time basis, beef-up its online news presence.

He is the recipient of many Associated Press awards and is a former judge of state and national Associated Press broadcast news contests. In 2005, he was presented with the Georgia Associated Press Broadcasters Association’s President’s Award for Excellence in Journalism and in 2019 was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame.

He lives in Gainesville with his wife of 52 years, the former Sandra McKnight of Clio, Alabama, and they have one child, a daughter, Lisa, who lives in Cumming with her family.